Digital Medial and Learning Conference - DML 2010

Below is an excerpt from the Voyager blog on the Digital Medial and Learning Conference http://dmlcentral.net/conference/conference-program second day workshop on Computational Textiles held in La Jolla, CA Feb 18-20th:

the fifth session i attended was a workshop chaired by Kylie Peppler, led by Leah Buechley, and which comprised Mike Eisenberg, Yasmin Kafai, Alan Gershenfeld and Heidi Schelhowe. being a workshop, this session was very different from any of the preceding four, in that we actually worked in groups to design and build a quick and dirty working electrical circuit! the session was entitled 'Computational textiles as New Media texts: Digital Media learning in youth and DIY communities'. motivated by the maxim of "digital media beyond the screen" (which manifested itself in "constructing / building, not just consuming"), Leah (examples of the work which she and her colleagues have been working on are here, here, here and here) opened by reminding us of the historical roots of the workshop in the work of the New London group back in 1996. an insight i took away from this workshop was that atomic fabs are able to traverse spaces in ways different from their virtual counterparts; they are also (in the particular example of computational textiles) able to traverse what might otherwise be perceived as traditional gender divides. i will remember this session as the very first time i have ever taken needle and thread to sew anything. you can see the results of my group's (including a former member of the FabLab and a QUT faculty member) collaborative handiwork in the photograph below :-)

See full post at: http://voyager.blogs.com/voyeurism/2010/02/digital-media-and-learning-dml2010-conference---notes-from-the-second-day.html